Design Parade – villa Noailles

Jerszy Seymour, aka the Event Designer, is taking over the villa this summer for his “creation of life situations”. A project following those already performed earlier this year at the MAK in Vienna (see post about it here) and at the Mudam in Luxembourg.

Jerszy Seymour: coalition of amateurs © Elisa Valenzuela

Together with his team, the Jeszy Seymour Design Workshop, he started building his “living system” around the villa.

©Laure Grandon

New points of view on the villa, news ways of exploring and experiencing this unique space… Discover this new design situation from July 3rd at the Villa Noailles !

©Laure Grandon

©Laure Grandon

On Saturday July 4th, Jerszy Seymour will be interviewed by Michèle Champenois (Le Monde 2) for the In The Shade conference at 5:30 PM. Don’t forget to book as reservations are required for this event.

We asked Ludovic Houlpain one of the three directors of the H5 studio to tell us more about his animation film Logorama, which will be shown Friday July 3rd for the opening of Design PARADE. 

Could you tell me more about the initial idea or position which underpins Logorama, the 15 minute animation film, the spearhead of your interests, so to speak?

There are several things: first, an observation. An environmental observation of identity, and the fact that brands can represent everything and everyone – we auditioned many people and checked everything, characters, materials, textiles, and so on. It is almost surreal to realize that everything can be represented by a logo… To make a film, we realized we could not limit ourselves to graphics, but also had to be prepared to turn away from the logo in favor of the narrative. Then, there may be a second or third aspect. The fact that the whole world can be “logo-ized” necessarily leads to debate. This is why simplicity and the story code are important. Logorama is the continuum of pop, transcribed here into communication, the communication of television. While pop art spoke of consumer society products, we talk more about the distribution of products, logos; it’s communication, in fact. 

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Don’t forget to call or email for reservations !

+33(0)4 98 08 01 98

contact@villanoailles-hyeres.com

Design Parade will open in less than two weeks ! The villa is getting ready to host the exhibitions: paintwork, cleaning, rearranging and receiving packages with the pieces to show.

The Villa initiale with pieces of the Djo Bourgeois exhibit still unpacked (photo Laure Grandon)

The Swimming pool waiting for Jerszy Seymour. (photo Laure Grandon)

Act Local is a project for which Stéphane Barbier Bouvet and Adrien Rovero are working with the city of Hyères (see post here). It is also supported by the Conseil Général du Var and the Toulon-Provence Méditerranée School of Art.

Here, Adrien and his team are constructing one of his information booths.

Find out more soon !

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Design PARADE opens on Friday July 3rd with a conference by Gordon Bruce on Eliot Noyes followed by the screening of Logorama, an animation movie by H5, recently awarded in Cannes.

Don’t forget to book for all of these events !

Simply call +33(0)4 98 08 01 98 or email contact@villanoailles-hyeres.com

A few days ago the 9 contestant taking part in Design PARADE’s young designers’ competition gathered for a meeting concerning the Seb Group Design Award. Lead by Frédéric Beuvry, head of design at Seb, it was an opportunity to learn more about this collaboration.

The young designers listening to the brief.

This year’s brief was about drinking filtered coffee. The idea is for each designer to develop a project in association with an in-house designer from Seb, which will advsise him or her on any technical matter.

Frédéric Beuvry addressing the group.

The winner of the Seb Group Design Award will be chosen by the Jury (see here) during the festival and will receive a 10 000 € prize. 

You will be able to view all the projects through a series of sildeshows in the young designer’s exhibition in the Salles Voûtées of the Villa from Friday, July 3rd.

In July 2008, Design PARADE 03’s jury selected Michel Charlot as their Grand Prix. One year later and thanks to his prize, Michel enjoyed from september 2008 to june 2009 a residency at the Manufacture Nationale of Sèvres. Just like Franck Fontana and Sébastien Cordoléani last year, he will show the result of his work in his personnal exhibition.

As the designer explains, working with ceramics was a fairly new experience: his project, for which he choose to focus on the shape of containers, was an occasion to interact with this new technique, to experiment with the various ways of assembling, glazing…. an occasion to take time to explore andeven  eventually make mistakes.

A student at l’ECAL, Michel is graduating this year. The exhibit is also an opportunity to discover some other recent projects .

In 2010, the Villa Noailles will open a permanant display : this will be the long waited for opportunity to  dive into the building’s unique history. Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, as two of the twentieth century’s most influent patrons of the art were surrounded by many great personnalities and works of art.

©David Dubois

The display’s ambition is to go beyond a traditionnal museographic project and to share with visitors the Count and Countess of Noailles’ attitude and choices in a time where many of the Modern era’s estheatical questions were debated.

©David Dubois

This summer a preview of the permanant display will be visible in three rooms of the Villa’s initial part.

This project is the work of Stéphane Boudin Lestienne, historian of the Villa, alongside David Dubois, designer.

They are accompanied by Raphaëlle Billé, researcher, Frédéric Teschner, graphic design and Christophe Ponceau, landscape.

Eliot Noyes is an important man to corporate design. He is the person behind the visual identities of american companies including IBM or Mobil; he is the person who made designers such as Paul Rand, George Nelson,  Mies van der Rohe or Charles Eames work on it with him.

And Eliot Noyes had his own vision of design and branding. It appeared to us important to remind each other of that today: what is good design ? Does creativity still means honest and good business ? Are we in a world where brands forget their role ?

Gordon Bruce is the author of Eliot Noyes’s monography published by Phaidon. We are very pleased to welcome him for a lecture In the Shade on Friday July 3rd. His insight on the pioneer of corporate design will be a wonderful introduction to H5’s point of view on our branded world in Logorama !  Both will interact on today’s realities on these issues.

Don’t forget to book for this evening! -reservations are required-

Act Local is the name of a project involving two Design PARADE nominees from previous years: Adrien Rovero and Stéphane Barbier Bouvet, and the city of Hyères-les-Palmiers. An initiative to connect the city to the spirit of the villa Noailles and its lasting modern tradition of patron of the arts, the Act Local project is also a way of offering new ways of experiencing urban life. What is there to see ? Why stop and look, contemplate and meditate ? A hint of poetry and a new point of view on the cityscape is brought with Stéphane’s Grand Vase, a concrete bench and Adrien’s information booths.

Adrien Rovero, Information Pavilions for the city of Hyères.

Sketch by Stéphane Barbier Bouvet.

Adrien’s booth rotate with the Sun’s position and the wind while Stéphane’s benches are also vases.

You can learn more about the Act Local project during the Festival from July 3rd at the Tour des Templiers trough an exhibition.

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Visit:

www.atelierbbb.com

www.adrienrovero.com

The main hall of the villa will show french designer François Azambourg’s work with the Centre International d’Art Verrier of Meisenthal. It is the story of a vase named “Douglas” a singular and stunning object crafted with a unique technique: a mix of tradition and innovation thought by the designer himself.

A mold made out of pine wood found in the Vosges area gives Douglas a special, and each time different, motif on its body.

Discover more about the story and the prototype from July 3rd at the Villa Noailles !